On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 12:17 PM, damodar kulkarni
Ok, let's say it is the effect of truncation. But then how do you explain this?
Prelude> sqrt 10.0 == 3.1622776601683795 True Prelude> sqrt 10.0 == 3.1622776601683796 True
Because there's no reliable difference there. The truncation is in bits (machine's binary representation) NOT decimal digits. A difference of 1 in the final digit is probably within a bit that gets truncated. I suggest you study IEEE floating point a bit. Also, study why computers do not generally store anything like full precision for real numbers. (Hint: you *cannot* store random real numbers in finite space. Only rationals are guaranteed to be storable in their full precision; irrationals require infinite space, unless you have a very clever representation that can store in terms of some operation like sin(x) or ln(x).) -- brandon s allbery kf8nh sine nomine associates allbery.b@gmail.com ballbery@sinenomine.net unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad http://sinenomine.net